As the field of wireless technology has advanced, social networking and online communication have become ubiquitous. Indeed, together, wireless computing devices and the web-based social networks enabled by such devices have allowed individuals from all corners of the globe to remain in contact with and even meet one another. Unfortunately, such contact is often limited by natural language barriers that prevent social networkers from effectively corresponding with and understanding one another. As such, social networks have thus far failed to connect international strangers with each other and the opportunity to engage in valuable, real-time communication with such international strangers is severely limited.
Some solutions have been proposed to solve this problem. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,271,260 to Wong et al. allows users of a social network to request translations for specific content provided on their social networking feeds. U.S. Pat. No. 8,983,850 to Hale et al., discloses a method of instantaneously translating text sent over instant messaging networks. This disclosure purports to aid one-to-one communication between established acquaintances. U.S. Appln. No. 2013/0030789 filed by Dalce even teaches a voice recognition module adapted to translate spoken languages for ease of communication.
Although such proposals ease some of the difficulties associated with communicating across different languages, they remain deficient. In one respect, this is because communicating members must opt in to the translation service by either affirmatively requesting a translation of some communicated message or affirmatively selecting a partner for communication from among established acquaintances. No solution exists which instead allows a user of a social network to selectively filter all members of a given social network, including strangers and acquaintances alike, to facilitate communication with any or all individuals according to the user's particular interests further independent of any need to consider whether a language barrier may prevent such communication. This may be a particular problem in a contemporary global economy and up-to-the-minute news cycle which thrives on real-time communication with remote witnesses and others at the scene of events who may not always be acquainted with one another.
Although various proposals have been made to solve the aforementioned problems, none of those in existence combine the characteristics of the present invention. Therefore, there is a need for a global social network platforms to seamlessly connect strangers and acquaintances alike with automatic, real-time, and multi-language translation.